Weezer at at Musikfest, Fresh Beat Band at Allentown Fair, Wynnona Judd and The Big Noise at Sands Bethlehem Event Center, and Jay Z and Beyonce at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia are among 45 shows for which we have information.

Steely Dan at Musikfest, Fran Cosmo of Boston at Allentown's Miller Symphony Hall, "American Idols Live" and The Temptations and The Four Tops at Sands Bethlehem Event Center and 3 Doors Down acoustic at Penn's Peak near Jim Thorpe are among nearly 40 shows for which we have information.

Here’s the list:

Luke Bryan, who plays Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Aug. 15.

Motley Crue Farewell Tour at Allentown Fair, Billy Joel at Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park, and Bruno Mars at Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, N.J., are among nearly 60 shows for which we have information this week.

There’s no arguing that popular music concerts have taken a great leap forward in the Lehigh Valley the past two years.

The May opening of Sands Bethlehem Event Center, with its 3,500-person capacity and affiliation with Sands Casino and promoting giant Live Nation, has alone shifted the paradigm.

Not since the heyday of Lehigh University’s Stabler Arena in the 1970s has the Lehigh Valley seen so much top-level entertainment. Ten of its shows made out Top 50 list. It booked 63 events in its first four months.

That comes just a year after Musikfest Cafe at SteelStacks opened a quarter-mile away, offering acts that may not be as big, but certainly are top national talent. It had six in our Top 50.

Bruce Springsteen in file photo Our Top Concert of the Year

Both came into a Lehigh Valley region market that already draws big names and the best of the up-and-coming, particularly to the Allentown Fair and Musikfest in downtown Bethlehem.

Still, six of my Top 10 Concerts of 2012 were Philadelphia shows.

Part of that is because the City of Brotherly Love has venues — stadiums and arenas such as Wells Fargo Center — large enough to attract music’s very top names. A three-hour-and-40-minute Bruce Springsteen show at Citizens Bank Park in which he played 32 songs and pushed his physical limitations is hard to beat. So is the lineup of a half-dozen top pop acts at radio station WIOQ-FM 102.1’s Jingle Ball.

But some of those top Philadelphia shows also were at smaller venues: fun., Jack’s Mannequin and Owl City all made the list with shows at the 680-capacity Theatre of Living Arts.

With Allentown’s planned 10,000-capacity hockey arena now under construction, the size disparity is shrinking, and the Lehigh Valley is clearly finding its feet as far as diverse and cutting-edge music.

So there’s every reason to expect the difference between the region’s offerings and Philadelphia’s to quickly shrink, if not disappear.

I, of course, did not see every concert offered in the region in 2012, but I did catch 150 of them, at 46 venues.

PHILADELPHIA -- Last time Bruce Springsteen came through Philadelphia in March, he had a lot on his mind: The June 2011 death of his longtime sax player and onstage foil Clarence Clemmons and his somber new album “Wrecking Ball,” which had just been released.

The result was a moving but serious night of reflection that demonstrated Springsteen’s ability to connect emotionally, but did that at the expense of much of the joy The Boss’s shows bring to his audiences.

Bruce Springsteen in file photo

But Springsteen’s return to the City of Brotherly Love on Sunday for the first of two concerts at Citizen’s Bank Park (he plays again tonight), swept away much of the sadness for a resolute celebration of life – that which has been lived, that which remains and the hope of that which is ahead.

And what a spectacle it was – pyrotechnics, giant puppets, an airplane roaring over the stadium, and, of course, a massive white wall of cardboard bricks stretching the span of the ball park through the outfield, a wall that was built up in front of the band as they played and then much of it knocked down as the spectacle concluded.

And the music – the entire 1979 Pink Floyd album, a popular rock opera based on themes of isolation and abandonment, performed with theatrical embellishment with Waters front and center and a great band (which includes Stroudsburg native and former “Saturday Night Live” band leader G.E. Smith, and Robbie Wyckoff, handling David Gilmour vocals). And the sound was surround-sound absorbing.

If you’re going to buy tickets Saturday to Bruce Springsteen’s shows Sept. 2 and 3 at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park – the Sept. 3 show was added Wednesday -- why not really get in the mood by heading over to the park Saturday night?

There, the first Philadelphia Springsteen Memories Roadshow will start at 6:30 p.m.

It may seem odd for a singing group whose members all are still in the 20s to be putting out a five-DVD career retrospective.

But the band we’re talking about is Hanson, the former boy band whose signature song, “MMMBop” first was released 13 1/2 years ago, when even the oldest of the sibling trio was just 16 and the youngest 11.

Hanson, from left, Zac, Taylor and Isaac

The fact that we’re still talking about Hanson — brothers Isaac, Taylor and Zac — all these years later is an indication they are, indeed, worthy of a such a retrospective.

That, and the fact that they’ve released four more critically and commercially successful discs since then and had nine Top 40 hits. And that their latest studio disc, “Shout It Out,” released in June with its single “Thinking ’Bout Somethin’,” not only was one of their better efforts, but hit Billboard’s Top 30.

They’re on yet another tour that Friday stops at Stroudsburg’s Sherman Theater, at which, eldest brother Isaac says in a recent phone call from the group’s Oklahoma studio, you can expect “you’re going to hear a good portion of songs that you know.”

In the call, Hanson spoke about the band’s legacy and its place these days, including the forthcoming DVD set.

Here’s a transcript of the call:

Issac Hanson: “We are just working away at a massive, massive project that’s coming out at the end of the year.”

Lehigh Valley Music: Well, now you’ve got to tell me about it – tell me what it is.

“Well, the massive project is a five-DVD box set with a best-of compiling of songs. It’s basically a CD and then also a five-DVD box set. And so what it is basically, when we launched ‘Shout It Out,’ a month before we released the record, we did a week-long stint in New York City, at The Gramercy, and we played all five of our albums night after night. And we also recorded and filmed that, and so that is what this project is – it’s about to release. It’s called ‘Five of Five’ and it will be shipping at the end of November.”

Oh cool, right in time for Christmas

“Exactly. It’s a mail-order type of project that we’re doing directly from the website. So it’s really cool.”

Tickets for many of the shows in the Jonas Brothers’ upcoming North American tour went on sale Saturday morning, and as of Sunday morning (gasp!) some are still available.

For their Aug. 27 show at Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden. N.J., seats were still available in the front part of the loge section at $97.25 each. Lawn seats also were available at $37.25 each.

That means the Jonases haven’t yet sold 15,000 reserved seats at Susquehanna.

That would have been unthinkable just a year ago. When tickets went on sale for the Jonases’ show last July at Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, they sold out in less than a day, and a second show was added, which also sold out.

The Wachovia Center holds about as many people as all of Susquehanna Bank Center – 25,000.

The Philly-area shows aren’t an anomaly.

For the Jonases’ Aug. 16 show at PNC Bank Center in Holmdel, N.J., there are seats available in the very front terrace (the farthest reserved section from stage) at $97.50. Lawn tickets at $37.50, also are available.

For the Aug. 14 show at HersheyPark Stadium, an unspecified number of $65.75 reserved tickets were available. For the Aug. 21 at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, N.Y., $97.50 seats in the rear middle were available.

Even the tour’s opening date July 27 at Superpages.com Center in Dallas – near where the Jonases now live -- had $97.50 tickets near the back of the reserved section available.

Don’t wanna make too much of this – the concerts are three months away and there’s every indication all of them eventually will sell out. But it’s telling that the ticket-buying craze of just last year apparently has eased.

There are a couple of extenuating circumstances, of course: The Jonas Brothers are on their fourth tour in 3 1/2 years (plus Nick Jonas did a shot solo tour), so everyone who has wanted to see them probably already has. These new shows largely represent repeat business.

The brothers won’t have new album out, as they have for the past three tours – although there will be new music with “Camp Rock 2” movie soundtrack, as well as the “JONAS: LA” TV show soundtrack due out. That means there will be new songs.

And ticket prices are a good bit higher – most a $20 jump – than when the brothers came through last year.

But it also is likely that the newsubject of ‘tween obsession – Justin Bieber – has cut into the JoBros’ audience.

When tickets to Bieber’s first tour went on sale in March, they sold out in a Jonas-like blink. Bieber’s show at Allentown Fair grandstand sold out in just over a half-hour, setting a record for a venue that has almost as many reserved seats (10,500) as the reserved-seat section of Susquehanna Bank Center.

So maybe the time has come in which the Jonas Brothers go from mania to normal obsession.

JOHN J. MOSER has been around long enough to have seen the original Ramones in a small club in New Jersey, U2 from the fourth row of a theater and Bob Dylan's born-again tours. But he also has the number for All-American Rejects' Nick Wheeler on his cell phone, wrote the first story ever done on Jack's Mannequin and hung out in Wiz Khalifa's hotel room.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

JODI DUCKETT: As The Morning Call's assistant features editor responsible for entertainment, she spends a lot of time surveying the music landscape and sizing up the Valley's festivals and club scene. She's no expert, but enjoys it all — especially artists who resonated in her younger years, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tracy Chapman, Santana and Joni Mitchell.

KATHY LAUER-WILLIAMS enjoys all types of music, from roots rock and folk to classical and opera. Music has been a constant backdrop to her life since she first sat on the steps listening to her mother’s Broadway LPs when she was 2. Since becoming a mother herself, she has become well-versed on the growing genre of kindie rock and, with her son in tow, can boast she has seen a majority of the current kid’s performers from Dan Zanes to They Might Be Giants.

STEPHANIE SIGAFOOS: A Jersey native raised in Northeast PA, she was reared in a house littered with 8-tracks, 45s and cassette tapes of The Beatles, Elvis, Meatloaf and Billy Joel. She also grew up on the sounds of Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw and can be found traversing the countryside in search of the sounds of a steel guitar. A fan of today's 'new country,' she digs mainstream/country-pop crossovers like Lady Antebellum and Sugarland and other artists that illustrate the genre's diversity.